


Bring Them Together (See How They Fall Apart)

by orbythesea



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orbythesea/pseuds/orbythesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years later, she'll get her first taste of what it all means. For now, she is still so young.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bring Them Together (See How They Fall Apart)

They want the same things, really.

She's 24 and it's her second summer with Crosher Abrahams & Abbot and she's all but guaranteed an offer so, next year, they'll be able to afford a bigger place.  It's too soon to start looking, but they have, holding hands as they spend their weekends walking through apartments and brownstones all over the city.

(They talk about buying but agree to save a bit first, to wait until they're ready to start a family together, until they can start researching schools.)

At night, in his tiny little rundown apartment (it's a source of pride, you see, not accepting help from his parents, and he has student loans to pay off), they spin dreams of a future together.  In July, he admits that he'd like to run for office someday and she kisses him and tells him that she's known that almost as long as she's known him.

(Years later, during his first campaign, she'll get her first taste of what that really means. For now she is still _so_ young.)

She didn't go to law school to become a litigator, but this summer she's realizing that she likes litigation more than transactional work.  When she tells him, it's a whispered confession as her they lie together, still breathless, sweat stubbornly refusing to dry in the summer heat.  She asks him what he thinks; he thinks she'll be brilliant.

(She was always a shy child, happier to observe the world than to participate in it.  She joined the debate team her freshman year of high school to get over hear fear of public speaking.  She doesn't tell him this.)

He's working on a big case, a double murder that's getting a fair bit of press coverage because the victims were white suburbanites.  She clips articles from all the papers and they're both a bit amazed by how good his name looks in print.  

(Fast forward fifteen years and she will cancel their subscriptions to the _Tribune_ and the _Sun-Times._ )

The condom breaks, once.  A week later, when her period is right on time, she thinks that she's never been so relieved in her life.  They celebrate with a bottle of wine and he reaches for her hand and whispers, "would it really have been so bad?"

(In that week, she admits to Owen how scared she is.  She's not ready; she's not even done with school.  He points out that abortion is safe and legal but they still haven't found a cure for AIDS.  She hangs up on him.)

She's going back to Washington on the twentieth.  He proposes on the nineteenth.  It's not a question, not really.  He just sets the little black box on the table and whispers, "marry me."  She hasn't even said yes before he's sliding the ring onto her finger.

(She doesn't stop wearing her wedding ring.  She wonders, were it not for the kids, she wonders if she would.  She wonders how that would feel.)

Back at school, she invites Will to the wedding before they even have a firm date, before she's officially invited her parents. He hesitates before he answers with a whispered, "of course."  There's a _but_ , too, but he doesn't say it.

(Years later, in an absurdly priced hotel room, she lets herself pretend that life would have turned out very, very differently if he had said then what he really thought.)

They get married in June and Will doesn't come. She's so busy studying for the bar in the weeks that follow that she can pretend that his absence doesn't hurt as much as it does. She gets her bar results in October and Peter suggests that they start trying for that family they've talked about.

(Trying seemed so innocuous, as if it was some law school hypo. The reality of just how fundamentally everything has changed won't hit her until she sends out birth announcements, scrawling Zach's birthday over and over. It's the first anniversary of her officially becoming a lawyer.)

Jackie keeps Zach overnight on Valentine's Day and Alicia's a bundle of nerves. In the restaurant, Peter keeps refilling her wineglass to calm her and by the time they finally stumble through the door they're both blindingly drunk. On the living room floor, they make love for the first time since Zach was born.

(Between work and the baby, she will be so busy that she won't notice a missed period until April. She won't tell Peter until May. Only her doctor will know how close she will come to not telling him at all.)

She says goodbye to her colleagues and packs up her office on Halloween. At home, she finds Jackie and Zach fighting over his pumpkin costume. She thanks her mother-in-law, takes a few pictures, then lets Zach tear the costume off. She falls asleep reading him a bedtime story and wakes up a few hours later with a dull ache in her back. Grace is born the next day.

(She will never regret her children. Even when she realizes that she spent more time in law school than she did practicing law, she doesn't regret them.)

Life marches forward and she becomes everything that she swore that she would never be. Still, she is happy, or at least happy enough that she can believe it when she tells herself that she is. She has a beautiful home, wonderful children, and a husband who loves her. It's enough. It should be enough.

(At a certain point, she will come to believe that she's suppressed her tears for so long that if she starts crying, she'll never stop. When she finally does break down, she learns that she is stronger than she ever knew.)

The Mexican restaurant below where they once lived above is closed, the windows to the tiny apartment they shared boarded shut. She drives by it on her way to meet a client and wonders when she started mistaking shared convictions for shared desires. She phones David Lee from the car.


End file.
